I stand on my seat, I jump, do not jump, but can sing along, scream. Everyone is shouting now and Bill with us. We, that’s about 10000 at the concert here and now is a time to memorize song lyrics from CD booklets and bravo. Scream! is our rallying cry, was my wake up call and the end of my childhood, by-monsoon singing in the darkened room with disco ball and blue neon tube the beginning of everything else.

It’s a Sunday in 2018, Tokio Hotel is giving a concert in Berlin, before that I meet Bill for an interview. We’ll talk about his collection and a little bit about the past, at least not about his brother and Heidi Klum, why? He will tell me that he does not think much about this earlier. On the other hand, I can not help considering the situation in contrast to the memories of my first Tokio Hotel concert and to experience at all. I have the shirt with me that I bought on 27.4.2007 in the Leipzig Arena. Location and date are on the back. It was the room tour, I was 11 and there with my dad, sitting on the couch to the right of the stage. These were the concessions made to parental concerns over the newspaper reports of collapsing teens.

These teens are all gone, but they are still there. I get a bit nervous as I walk past the long line of pending, or sitting there for some time, sitting fans. The front is broken down, there is a SCREAM, ROOM483 and KINGS OF SUBURBIA entrance. I know what it’s all about after I’ve passed the PRESS entrance. I’m told that there are different price levels of tickets and you can, for example, with a Scream Upgrade for the double ticket price 15min. in front of the others may be allowed to then possibly 1.5m further forward.

But now the hall is empty, except for some fog and purple light and some scattered crew members. You take us up a flight of stairs to the backstage and then you are always surprised by the desolation of such back rooms, which are so dull because they are so hoping for so much, interpreted so much into the rooms behind the Doors that remain closed to the normal visitor. Here you could hardly be further from Band room romance, groupie escapades or intoxicants. Everything is light and almost clinically clean and white. We walk through a corridor, in the adjoining room you can catch a glimpse of the entire band standing there lost between all the Meet & Greets, fan sound checks and photo sessions accompanying the concert, opening the door to those who are ready to go numbers.

We are led into the room next door. Here are 2 couches, 2 bottles of water on a table and a circle of chairs that reminds strangely of a seminar or kindergarten and that has obviously happened here too, just before. In the corner on another table gifts: a handwritten letter, a purple orchid and some slightly deranged plastic bags, maybe not so much has changed. At least that’s reminiscent of the Bravo photos you have in mind. In front of it is a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels that does not fit in here and looks like it’s left over from another band. Maybe by Rammstein, whose oversized framed poster hangs on the wall.

“Aah nice and cool here” – says Bill as he enters the room after a few minutes of waiting.
He wears blue Nike VaporMax Plus, a green shirt from Champion, a red paisley bandana knotted around his neck and matching silver glasses with red lenses. When he sits down after greeting everyone, he first has to pull up the bottom of his ultra destroyed jeans. Although, as he reports, this is his tenth meeting today, he is very alert and open. He talks and laughs a lot. His whole behavior, that the conversation makes pleasant and less nervous, is a mixture of East German directness and LA Feel-good logic.
That seems to be the key to enduring the hustle and bustle. On a day like today, he has only an hour to spare and now has time to tell me that he is always nervous before the show, even after all these years.

Dandy Diary: Are you going to be on stage like that later?No, there are fixed stage costumes, so I do not have to worry every time, that’s relaxed. But the hectic is, I have 30 seconds in the meantime only to change and then dragging around 30 people around me and all at the same time have to remove and put on. The idea of the whole show is that we are landing on the stage with our dream machine so ufomäßig and that’s why we are all in the captain’s look. Actually, I’m the captain and the others are my assistants. And everyone has space suits on in the beginning and the guys keep that up all the time and I think I change the outfit 4 times.

Dandy Diary: Do you think about the costumes yourself?Yeah, so that’s always the nicest part for me on such a show that I can do the outfits. This time I did the outfits for the boys too. I am working with a designer from Berlin. Mostly it’s like I come up with 20 ideas and then we make a huge mood-board and then I show her what I imagine and she tells me what works and what does not. But I can actually skate a bit myself and something like that. So that’s my passion, I could never give it away and tell someone: go ahead!

Dandy Diary: You also designed your merch yourself. In the present time of the Logo-mania you can also wear band shirts outside of bed and gym. Do you wear this privately?I always have to watch a bit, because sometimes you want to be incognito and we all carry our merchandise all day and I think that looks really stupid, if you sometimes have Tokio Hotel on it. But the stuff is totally awesome, we love them all privately and we put them all on and the whole crew runs around with them.

Dandy Diary: If you say you designed the collection. What does that mean? How do you proceed?We first had blanks like in the past, where we simply printed the motifs and the stuff is done. Then I started with the sweater, I made this hoodie myself, because I thought there was no hot stuff. So I started picking out the fabrics and a cut and then everyone loved this hoodie so much that we thought we could not do a normal merch, we have to do it all by ourselves. And then I thought that’s right, that must be a bit more expensive, of course you can not offer that at the same prices. Then I got in completely.
I’m doing this with a Berlin company now, they’re doing the 032c stuff as well. Marie and I realized this at some point because we ran into each other in the office. In 2-3 weeks now come again 5 parts. I do not want to work in collections, but I just always want to add parts. So it should not be a standstill, now I’m just too much break.

The ABOUT YOU Awards on ProSieben:
Who are the biggest social media stars in Germany?

Dagi Bee, Sophia Thiel, Riccardo Simonetti or Julien Bam – they are all absolute maga stars of the generation “Digital Natives”. And all the hot contenders for the ABOUT YOU Awards, which will be presented on May 3, 2018, 23:00 hours on ProSieben. Lena Gerke and Steven Gätjen will host the big award show of social media stars.

The ABOUT YOU Awards are presented in a total of seven categories: Fashion, Beauty, Lifestyle, Fitness, Upcoming, YouTube and Music. More than 1.7 million fans and followers set their top 3 in each category in early March with more than 5 million votes. The winners of the Top 3 are chosen by the more than 1,500 guests at the push of a button in the Munich Bavaria Studios. Among them: Bill and Tom Kaulitz, Luna Schweiger, Noah Becker, Wayne Carpendale, Tom Beck, Eva Padberg, Franziska Knuppe and Sarah Lombardi.

The presenters of the respective categories include Steffi Giesinger, Lisa and Lena, Armin Moorbach as well as Thomas Hayo and Michael Michalsky.